French couple, 86, slam 'cruel' law in suicide note

Published: 25 Nov 2013 13:57 GMT+01:00

The plight of an 86-year-old couple, who committed suicide together at a luxury Paris hotel last week has provoked much emotion in France. On Monday it emerged they had penned a scathing suicide note, reigniting a row in France over assisted suicide. Read what they had to say.

The couple, together since their teens, checked into the world-famous Hotel Lutetia on Thursday night and at some point in the night, they took medication designed to induce a painless death, according to Le Parisien. The couple also ordered breakfast to be delivered to their room in the morning to ensure they would be found quickly.

Georgette and Bernard were discovered dead, hand-in-hand, in their bed on Friday morning by a member of staff. Two letters were left by their bedside.

On Monday it was revealed that one of them contained a scathing attack on France’s prohibition of euthanasia.

Bernard and Georgette Cazes, pictured at the age of 29, in 1956; Photo: Screengrab/Le Parisien

“By what right can a person be forced into a cruel [situation], when they wish to end their life peacefully?” asked the letter, parts of which were quoted in Le Parisien on Monday.

“Isn’t my freedom only limited by the freedom of others? By what right can they prevent a person [from ending their life peacefully], when they’ve paid their taxes, have no debts to the state, have worked all their lives, and then done voluntary service?”

Georgette, in particular, expressed her anger at being denied the “gentle death” they sought, by France’s long-standing ban on euthanasia.

Underlining the couple’s determination, their eldest son told Le Parisien on Monday that they had made their decision to die together “several decades ago.”

“They feared being separated or dependent, more than they feared death,” he added.

The lobby of the famous luxury Hotel Lutetia in Paris, where Georgette and Bernard Cazes spent their last night together. Photo: Gary Bembridge

French President François Hollande has promised to bring a bill before the French parliament by the end of 2013.

For his part, Jean-Luc Romero, president of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, told The Local on Monday that without a new law on euthanasia, those who wished to end their lives before a prolonged and painful sickness or period of decline, would continue to be forced to use drastic means to do so.

"Unfortunately, the fate of this couple is typical. There are many elderly French people who are forced every year to take their own lives in very unpleasant ways," he said, adding that this case proved beyond doubt that the time had come for French law to change.

"Quite simply, we need a new law which allows people in similar circumstances to this couple, to be able to seek assistance from doctors and to pass away peacefully and with dignity, in the company of their loved ones," he added.

Friends and neighbours, meanwhile, have been effusive in their praise for the couple, who for decades worked as “brilliant intellectuals” – Bernard an economist and philosopher, and Georgette a teacher of literature and Latin, who wrote school text-books.

“They had such dynamism, such strong willpower,” one neighbour in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux told Le Parisien, others describing them as “distinguished” and “charming.”

“They were a couple who loved each other, you could see it. I can understand how one living on without the other would have seemed impossible,” said another.

They had lived, said their neighbour Jeannine, as they died: “Always arm in arm.”

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